The National Marine Sanctuary says the two kayakers are very lucky to be alive after being far too close to a humpback whale.

Video captured on Saturday shows a humpback whale breaching over the top of two people in a kayak, their boat capsized but they eventually made it to shore safely.

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Monterey Bay Kayak took the two tourists out on the trip to see whales and guides there say after this weekend they have canceled their whale watching tour for the foreseeable future.

Guide Sean Furey, with Monterey Bay Kayak, who was out leading the tour on Saturday, said the breach over the two clients is unlike anything he has ever seen before.

"This is probably one of the most interesting things I have ever seen happen, a whale capsizing a kayak, which, is pretty unheard of," he said about the accident.

Furey said the group was making its way back into the harbor when it stopped to watch a pod of whales, and that is when the animal breached and hit the boat.

"As I looked back, I saw the whale breach up out of the water, you know right next to the kayak, land and the kayak and kayakers went underwater," Fury said.

Furey said he thinks the whale, or one of its appendages, grazed the kayak, because the boat ended up with a small dent on the bow.

The two people in the kayak were in town from the United Kingdom and were en route to London Monday, but one of the tourists, Tom Mustill, had this to say about the incident in an email, "it certainly was an unusual experience - and very unexpected," Mustill wrote Monday.

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary said Mustill and his companion should be thankful they are both still here to talk about the accident.

"This could have been fatal, I mean a full grown humpback whale is on the order of 35 to 40 tons. I mean you're talking about 60,000 pounds coming down on you, coming directly down on you," said Scott Kathey the enforcement coordinator with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Kathey said no one should be as close to a whale as the two kayakers in the video were and adds that in some cases it's even against federal law.

"The Marine Mammal Protection Act is very protective of marine mammals. If you make them change their behavior in anyway, simply the act of swimming away from you could be a violation of federal law, and those violations could range from the hundreds to thousands of dollars," he said.

Kathey said it is too difficult to tell if the kayakers did anything wrong but he said the rule is: stay at least 100 yards away from whales at all times.

Furey said they go over the Marine Mammal Protection Act with clients before they get out on the water, and Monterey Bay Kayak said it also tells clients they are taking a risk when they kayak out on the ocean.

"We're actually at this point stopped doing these tours, you know we've talked to some biologists and we feel it's probably affecting the health of the whales, affecting their ability to feed so we just want to make sure that the whales are safe out there and keep everybody safe here," he said.

Furey said even when you attempt to maintain a 100-yard distance whales can be unpredictable. He said that in combination with the increased numbers of whales, this season is part of the reason why they are canceling their whale watching tours.